1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method, an apparatus, and a program storage medium, for efficiently browsing and viewing a wide variety of contents available on a wide area network such as the Internet or a wide variety of contents stored in a local storage.
2. Description of the Related Art
With a recent increase in popularity of the Internet and with a recent increase in popularity of personal computers and portable information processing terminals having a communication capability, it has become popular to acquire various kinds of information via Web pages provided by servers on the Internet. Note that Web is a short form of World Wide Web and is also expressed as WWW.
Web pages are units of Web contents. When a Web content is viewed via viewing software such as a browser or a viewer, one Web page is displayed at a time. Each Web page may include various kinds of digital information (content data) such as text information, still image information, motion image information, audio information, graphics information, or a program or a combination of two or more such information. More specifically, each Web page may include digital data of a photographic image (still image information), a movie (motion image information), diary information called a blog, comment information, book review information, schedule information, mail information, etc.
As described above, viewing software such as a browser or a viewer is used to view a Web page (digital content) provided by a server on the Internet. More specifically, use of viewing software makes it possible to acquire a desired Web page from a server on the Internet. Display information such as text information, still image information, motion image information, etc. included in the acquired Web page is displayed on a display screen, while audio information such as music information included in the Web page is reproduced in the form of a voice/sound.
Many techniques have been proposed to improve easiness or convenience in using viewing software. For example, in viewing software disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-030145, book mark data indicating an address of a site is displayed in the form of a thumbnail image so that a user is allowed to easily select a desired site.
In viewing software disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-076598, when a content has been updated, information indicating that the content has been updated is provided to a user without the user needing to perform any operation, so that the user does not miss updated information.